SasuSaku: Until We Meet Again
by Immiker86
Summary: In a world where you age until you're eighteen and then stay suspended in that state until you meet your soul mate, whom you then age together with, Sakura is one of the few skeptics of the system. However, when she runs into her supposed soul mate in a dark alley, she has to make some tough choices. Why has her luck seemingly deserted her, and what does the future hold for them?
1. Chapter 1

Being alone sucked.

Sakura Haruno realized that this was a rather cliché statement, as she sat on the bus, leaning her head against the windowpane despite the vibrations that seemed to send small earthquakes into her cranium with every jolt of the vehicle. However, as she lifted her head from the torture that it was enduring and turned her head to her friend next to her, she realized that her predicament was not of the same nature as that of many other people who have uttered said statement.

Until approximately two years ago, one of those people had been Sakura's best friend, Ino Yamanaka. In a world where people age until they reach the age of eighteen, and then stop aging until they meet their soul-mate so they can grow older together, at age seventeen, the two girls had made a pact for the hunt to officially begin.

It's not like it was particularly hard: Because of this whole soul mate business, a huge industry had bloomed, with online dating and organizations claiming they had found the perfect algorithm for finding your soul mate. Sakura couldn't help but peg those as little better than scams, but there were many people who practically found their soul mates as soon as or even before they turned eighteen. But Sakura had truthfully always been skeptical: Even though she knew it to be true, she also found it hard to believe that soul mates were something you were born with, regardless of how you developed as a person. As the pink-haired girl surveyed her friend, contentedly sifting through the photos on her phone, she could, with a pang of sadness, already see a measure of matureness in Ino's eyes that were that she never saw in her own, no many how long she spent scrutinizing her own face in the bathroom mirror.

At the date of their respective eighteenth birthdays, the two had been of equal height: However, soon after, Ino had met Sai via one of the many dating websites available, and the two had been happily together ever since. Sakura often wondered how people knew that they had found their soul mates, since it would take at least a year for them to notice the difference in aging. However, when she posed this question to Ino, she just shrugged and said 'We just knew, you know.' Sakura would often secretly scoff at that. It wasn't that she didn't want to find the love of her life: In fact, she was often envious of her friend's gradual aging, so in sync with their partners. She just felt that the whole idea of meeting a stranger and just falling in love with them irrevocably was such a preposterous idea, especially from a sheer biological perspective. She believed love was cultivated. And yet, when she saw Ino and Sai, so obviously delirious in their joy, something would twist inside her. It would happen when it was supposed to. Or so she tried to convince herself, as she recalled that Ino would be old enough to drink in a year. And there Sakura was.

'Sakura. Hey. Forehead!'

'What?' Sakura snapped out of her reverie, to stare at Ino, who was ushering her off the bus with hurried hand gestures.

'It's your stop, dummy!'

'Oh, right.' Sakura fumbled for her bag, then lurched off the bus, nearly knocking over a senior citizen in the process. Once the doors hissed shut behind her, she pulled her coat tighter around her and strode along the street that would take her home, shivering in the bitter October wind. Ever since she had started studying medicine, she and Ino had grown further apart. These bus trips were the only time they ever spent together now, but Sakura couldn't help but wonder if a part of it was the fact that Ino was already outgrowing Sakura as a friend.

In this world, there were a lot of stories. Horror stories, Ino dubbed them. Tales of unfortunate people, Sakura thought haughtily. Stories of people who went decades without finding their soul mates, watching as their family and friends slowly moved on and even passed away, while they remained eternally in the state of an eighteen-year old. An image of a girl with Ino's smile and Sai's eyes looking old enough to be Sakura's sister came to the pink-haired girl's mind, and she promptly shivered once more.…

When Sakura got back home, she locked the door of her tiny studio apartment, then strode across the hall/tiny living room and dumped her bag on the small coffee table with a resigned sigh. Her small cat, named Naruto as a pike at friend´s whisker-like marks on his face, padded over silently, and Sakura leaned down to stroke his orange fur. Suddenly, her phone rang, startling Naruto, and causing him to retreat, padding over to the corner of the room and lapping at his bowl of water.  
Sakura rummaged through her pockets, pulling out her phone and pressing the green button on the call screen.

'Hi Dad. How are you and Mum?' The gravelly voice of her father came from the other end.

'We're fine, dear. I know it's late, but I just wanted to warn you about another one of those people lurking around your area. Apparently, there have been reports from several people that there's been a strange man approaching random residents and asking to look into their eyes. I know you don't believe that these people can even find their soul mates that way anyways, and that they're just loonies, but just be on the alert, sweetie.'

'Will do, Dad. You guys take care of yourselves too. I'll see you Saturday for dinner.'

'Of course. Good night, kiddo.' With a click, Sakura was left standing alone in her apartment, clutching her phone and with a strange chill in her gut.  
Those who her dad had chosen to so eloquently dub as 'those people' were the few individuals who had survived centuries without aging, by murdering their soul-mates upon meeting them, and then finding their new reincarnations, and repeating the process. It was illegal, of course, and extremely difficult to pull off. Soul mates were generally not born on opposite sides of the world, but in most cases, they were hard to find. Sakura could never understand why these people had to go to the extreme of murdering the love of their lives, instead of just moving away, but she supposed that fate had its way. In a way, she never believed those stories, partly because of her disdain toward the whole concept of a soul mate, but perhaps, to a lesser degree, because of her utter lack of understanding for how someone could stand spending eternity alone. Yawning, she strode over to the small kitchen adjoining to the living room, absentmindedly filling Narutos food bowl before rummaging through her fridge for something to eat. And swearing as she found it to be completely empty.

'Dammit. I knew I forgot something.' Med school was rewarding, but it was also the most stressful thing she'd ever had to go through. It wasn't uncommon for her to forget things, (once, she was twenty minutes late to class because her phone had somehow ended up in the oven) so as she glanced at the clock, showing ten minutes to ten, she decided that she could probably still make it to the convenience store to get some instant noodles. Grabbing her purse and coat from where she had set them down moments before, she rushed out of the apartment.

Jogging through the dark streets, occasionally lit by a stray lamppost, Sakura silently cursed her own forgetfulness. The evening was still, and the streets had an eerie quality to them. The pink haired girl had taken a self-defense class a while back at the insistence of her mother, so she knew how to defend herself, but as the sound of a car alarm suddenly went off in the distance, she couldn't help but give a startled jump.

When she was only a block away from the small grocery store, she felt a chill pass through her, as though she was being watched. Before she could stop herself, she glanced quickly over her shoulder, spotting nothing but inky black, broken by an occasional patch of light.  
Mentally slapping herself, she turned her gaze back to her own path, trying hard not to trip over anything in the darkness, quickening her pace. She was passing a row of cars, parked by the sidewalk.

A stone skittered across the pavement behind her.

Snapping her gaze backwards, Sakura registered nothing unusual. There was a dark blur of movement, something vanishing behind the first car of the row she was passing.

'Probably just a cat,' she muttered to herself. Stepping into the glare of a street lamp, she turned her gaze forwards once more, only to suppress a scream at the sight of the man standing before her. Everything about him was inky black, from the tips of his boots to his long cloak to his raven hair. However, as the blue of her eyes met the black of his, she was shocked to see his irises slowly turning a shade of scarlet red. As their eyes met, Sakura could swear her heart skipped a beat. And suddenly, the world just seemed to snap into place. As though she had been near-sighted her whole life without realizing it, and this man had just given her a pair of glasses.. Stunned, she struggled to reorient herself, feeling a sudden bout of dizziness overcome her.

Before she could yell, or adopt a fighting position, there was a swooshing sound, and she felt her back thud against the pavement, a hand clamped firmly around her throat. Gasping for air, stars swimming across her field of vision, Sakura struggled futilely against the iron grip pinning her to the cold ground, registering, to her horror, the man's other hand, withdrawing a small silver dagger from underneath his cloak. The med student arched her back violently, trying to buck the strange man off. Through her pain and lingering feeling of disorientation, she heard a deep voice growl something. A voice that she'd never heard before, but somehow recognized nonetheless.

'My name is Sasuke Uchiha. Until we meet again, my other half.'


	2. Chapter 2

_"Until we meet again, my other half."_

Her supposed soul mate's words echoed in her mind, his voice placid even as he prepared to cold-bloodedly murder her. Sakura arched her back once again, in a final, futile attempt to get Sasuke off her, even as she saw the knife come down. When the gleaming metal was mere inches from her chest, and the shining steel seemed to fill up her whole field of vision, she closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable sound of metal cutting flesh.

However, the sensation of the weapon sliding in between her ribs never came. Instead, she heard a rough clatter on the rough pavement by her head, and then her airways were suddenly, wonderfully unobscured as the man on top of her rolled off. Gasping for breath, Sakura opened her eyes slowly, and, propping her aching body into a semi-upright position in the cruel glare of the street light, stared incredulously at Sasuke, sprawled not a meter next to her, gripping his forehead and in obvious pain. She observed him clinically: His face had taken on an unhealthy greenish hue, and he seemed to be sweating profusely. To her med-student eyes, he seemed to be experiencing exaggerated symptoms of a panic attack. Sakura squinted at him warily, the light irritating her eyes, trying to see if this was some sort of ploy, if he was waiting to attack her again. One of Sasuke's hands lifted from his face for a brief moment, exposing his mouth, which seemed to be forming unintelligible words, and Sakura's hand flew automatically to the knife still lying on the pavement beside her. But as Sasuke made no further move to harm her, and as her eyes found his, which seemed to be flickering feverishly, her medical instincts took over.

'For crying out loud.' She muttered angrily, getting on her hands and knees, ignoring the stinging pain from the scrapes caused by her earlier fall, cautiously bringing the knife along with her as she scooted over until she was sitting right by Sasuke. She gripped his arms and firmly placed them on the ground by his head, and he let her do so, seeming to delirious to struggle.

'If you do anything funny, I can and will run you through with this knife, you asshole.' When the man on the ground responded in no other way than to groan half-heartedly, Sakura began taking his pulse in an experienced fashion, critically judging his sporadic breathing. Normal Sakura was still shouting at her to get a grip, what the hell did she think she was doing helping the guy who'd literally just tried to kill her, supposed soul mate or not, but all medic Sakura could think about was that this man was obviously in a sorry state, and she couldn't just leave him and walk away.

Another, more secluded part of her, was still reveling in the new-found state of clarity the world seemed to have adopted, and was perhaps a little scared that it would go away if the man before her did. A darker part of her wondered what would happen if she just left her soul mate unprotected in the dark of night, lying utterly helpless on the street. The pink-haired girl suppressed a shudder at the thought of spending fifty, a hundred years, utterly alone, watching everyone around her age away from her, waiting for a soul mate who would be reincarnated God knows where in the world. Sakura's fingers roamed over Sasuke's forehead, and she frowned at the fever she felt there.

Ever so unsteadily getting on her feet, Sakura surveyed the situation. The streets were deserted at this hour, and Sasuke's shirt had ridden up a bit, exposing his (quite well built) abdomen to the chilly wind. Sighing, she made up her mind. Kneeling to pick up the knife in one hand, she grabbed Sasuke's arm and hauled him unceremoniously into a sitting position, before kneeling down and gently coaxing him into a position where his head lolled against her shoulder and she was supporting his weight. It was awkward as she rose, the knife clutched in one hand, the other struggling to keep Sasuke upright, and she nearly keeled over from his, despite his lean build, quite significant weight. Nearly running both of them through in an attempt to shift him into a more comfortable position, and briefly considering if he could take the brain damage that dragging him like a sack of potatoes all the way back to her apartment would cause, she began taking one laborious step at a time back the way she had come mere minutes before, muttering profanity under her breath the entire way back. The universe must have sensed she was not in the mood, and not a soul crossed her path.

After twenty minutes of colorful demonstrations of the many swear words of the English language, Sakura dumped Sasuke's limp body onto her faded sofa, in the middle of her tiny living room. Stepping back with a sigh, she surveyed her tiny living space, the faded walls and the collection of papers and coffee mugs, scattered haphazardly on every horizontal surface. A soft sweeping motion by her ankles startled her, and she looked down to see Naruto, his piercing blue eyes meeting hers as he wound his orange body lazily around her ankle. Relinquishing his grip on her cool skin, the stalked forward to glance at the robed figure slumped on the couch. After a few seconds of silence, he hissed loudly. Sasuke didn't bat an eyelid: he seemed to be out cold.

'What on earth have I gotten myself into?' Sakura heaved a deep sigh, pacing across the small space, stepping over Naruto and fetching his water bowl, before filling it up with cold water from the sink and setting it down on the floorboards with a resigned sigh. The cat quickly abandoned his hateful glaring at Sasuke, and instead chose to lap at the liquid eagerly. Sakura watched him for a moment, then found a towel in one of her kitchen drawers and wet it in the sink, before moving back to Sasuke and placing the moist rag on his forehead. To her discontent, she noticed that his fever had, if anything, gone up. 'By all rights, I should be turning you in to the authorities. You should feel really freaking lucky that I have a soft spot for helpless bastards.' Sakura returned to the kitchen, collecting a cup of water before setting it on the small table beside the couch. She then pulled up a chair and took a seat at the head of the sofa. Her gaze drifted over the man's pale face, framed by pitch-black locks, and came to rest on his mouth, lips parted in incoherent feverish mumbles.

She couldn't help but wonder why this man was experiencing these symptoms of anxiety from attempting to kill her, when, if she would deign to believe the rumors, he had so relentlessly killed countless of her previous incarnations. Sakura wondered quietly if that made him her murderer. She shuddered against her will: She had never been a huge fan of this whole concept of a soul mate to begin with, and now it was messing with her head the more she was thinking about it. The pink-haired woman looked around suddenly, realizing she had dropped the knife on the floor while she was wrestling Sasuke into her apartment. Sighing (for probably the thousandth time that night, by her reckoning), she snatched it up before an oblivious Naruto could hurt himself on it, and gripped it in her hand, watching the figure, previously so imposing and yet now so seemingly defenseless, figuratively burning up on her couch.

'I can't exactly do much for you when you're unconscious, so you better wake up soon. And when you do, you'd better behave.' Sasuke continued mumbling deliriously, eyes darting rapidly back and forth behind his eyelids. 'You know, I really must have done something utterly horrible in my previous life to deserve someone like you as my soul mate.'

Muttering darkly, Sakura fetched a quilt, unceremoniously dumping it on Sasuke, yanking off his boots and arranging his longlegs so that he looked moderately comfortable, both legs still dangling off the end of her couch. Filling a bucket with cold water, she sat herself on the stool by his head again, dunking the towel (which had already gone warm) in the water and wringing it out before placing it on his forehead once more. In the soft light of her overhead lighting, the minutes dragged on, and she soon found her eyelids getting heavy. Drowsily rinsing the towel once more, she soon fell asleep with her elbows supporting her head atop the arm rest of the couch, one hand placed by Sasuke's forehead to monitor his temperature, and one hand tightly grasping the knife.


End file.
